


Putting Down Roots

by saisei



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Body Horror, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Plant horror, Plants, Status Effects, Vines, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:28:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/pseuds/saisei
Summary: Ignis and Prompto deal with the fallout from a fight with a plant daemon near the Vesperpool.
Relationships: Prompto Argentum/Ignis Scientia
Comments: 8
Kudos: 39
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	Putting Down Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatScottishShipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatScottishShipper/gifts).



All kinds of new daemons appeared after the sun went out. According to Sania, many of them were scourge-corrupted versions of animals, insects, reptiles, fish – anything alive could be turned. She said hunters had captured toad daemons once and brought them to her for study.

She said she'd cried.

Prompto understood that feeling right down in his gut. Sometimes he envied Ignis for not being able to see some of the nasty daemons they had to kill while out hunting. His own moment of personal peak horror came when they were investigating a disturbance along the Vesperpool road. They'd had to park the truck and head off back into the woods to where the ground was all wet and mushy, every step sucking at his boots, and Ignis had kept losing his way because of the mucky terrain.

When they found the thing they'd been hunting, he could tell it was a daemon but it didn't seem like it had ever been animal at all. Its limbs whipped out with fluid malice, as if it had never had bones, and it didn't have a face, either, like something ripped out of Prompto's worst nightmares. Ignis discovered it was vulnerable to fire and wielded his spelldaggers, but the daemon could sink into the ground, extinguish the flames, and then burst from the soil somewhere else – under Prompto's feet, or Ignis'.

Prompto didn't have any idea how to deal with it until he got up close and personal with his circular saw and severed a dozen or so of its limbs. When they were still on the ground, he could see clearly that they had leaves and thorns, even a few delicate red flowers.

He'd been right, this daemon wasn't animal at all.

"Iggy!" he called, swapping out for his flamebreath cannon. "Fall back, I'm going to toast the rosebush!"

He pulled the trigger as soon as Ignis was out of range, and the whole thing roasted like a bad campfire. 

Prompto whooped, and then squished his way over to where Ignis was leaning against a tree, breathing hard. There was no point in asking if Ignis was hurt; he always said he was fine. But blood didn't lie, and it was easy to see that the left sleeve of his shirt was rapidly staining red. Prompto was all set to cut the sleeve off, but Ignis said he could clean it and good shirts didn't grow on trees.

"I'd rather have shirt-trees than daemon houseplants," Prompto said, mouth babbling on automatic as he unbuttoned Ignis' shirt.

Like always, he felt a pang of regret-slash-sadness that he never got to undress Ignis for sexy, seductive reasons, and blood loss was usually involved. Ignis winced as he pulled his arm free, and Prompto could see that the vines had really done a number on him. Dark purple bruises twisted around his arm, and the thorns had been driven all the way in – through in some places, it looked like.

"There's naught that can be done here," Ignis said, walking his fingers up his arm to feel out the damage. "The campsite should be just up the road. This needs clean water and some ointment."

"We've got potions," Prompto reminded him.

Ignis gave him a scornful look, and pulled his shirt back on carefully. "Be honest. Did you see anything that warrants wasting a potion?"

They only had a few left, and Noct had already been gone for five years. Who knew how much longer they needed to make their resources last. "Maybe not," Prompto said. He didn't want Ignis to think he was totally off the hook.

The walk back to the car took ages, and despite how insistent he'd been that he was absolutely 100% fine, Ignis threw up two times, doubling over and hacking wretchedly while Prompto rubbed his shoulders and mentally vowed that he _would_ use a potion just as soon as they got to camp. Plants weren't totally blameless even without being scourge-corrupted: maybe it had been ragweed before, or poison ivy, or those flowers he'd read about that shouldn't ever be touched because they could stop your heart.

But when they arrived at the haven, Ignis assured Prompto that he wasn't feeling nauseous anymore; that it had simply been dizziness from being whipped around. He let Prompto clean his arm with water boiled to get the impurities out, and tweeze out the broken-off bits of thorns that were embedded deep in Ignis' skin. Prompto took a set of pictures, spread ointment on in a thick layer, bandaged Ignis from shoulder to wrist, and let him crawl into the tent to sleep while he sent a message to Dave to get in touch with Kimya. Ignis getting sick after encountering a new daemon suggested some kind of new status effect, or good old-fashioned poison, or allergies. Prompto was a city boy, he didn't know. He really hoped Kimya'd seen that kind of plant-creature before – she was old and wise, she must have, right?

Prompto woke before Ignis the next morning and was fixing breakfast when Ignis stumbled out and over to the edge of the haven, where he coughed and choked, gagging as his body struggled to expel something. Turning the burner off, Prompto raced over, and found Ignis miserably trying to pull a long trailing vine out of his throat. When the whole thing was out, it was nearly a meter long.

Prompto grabbed a potion and didn't give Ignis any choice. He broke it over him and watched the magic sparkle into Ignis' skin.

"What the hell," Prompto said, holding Ignis as he shook, "was that?"

Ignis tried to speak, but that triggered another round of choking and more vines. In the end, they both ended up missing breakfast, not that Prompto minded. He'd lost his appetite long before the vines started developing tiny thorns and flowers. 

When Ignis finally seemed to have all the shrubbery out of his system, Prompto hauled him back to sit in front of the fire. He went back to grab all the vines and tossed them on the fire. He half expected them to try and crawl away, but at least they didn't seem to be alive (yet). Just... creepy.

When he'd made sure they were all reduced to ash, Prompto looked over at Ignis, who was scratching at his unbandaged arm as if it was unbearably itchy. The skin had broken, and something dark was visible underneath.

"Hold up," he said. "Let me see, Iggy."

Ignis startled, as if he'd forgotten Prompto was there. "It's nothing." He looked kind of out of it, like he was distracted.

Prompto grasped his arm with one hand and pinched the thing growing under Ignis' skin. He pulled as slowly as he could, terrified thinking of what would happen if he didn't get all of it out. It was... a seedling, he thought, with a bump at the top like folded leaves, a wiry vine body, and roots that he pulled, and pulled, and pulled. The finest ones broke off, eventually, and he was left holding this monstrous bloody plant-thing.

It horrified him, and he hurled it into the fire, too.

Ignis frowned, and reached his free hand for the oozing wound. Prompto knocked his hand away. "Some kind of parasite?"

"I sent Dave pics to show to Kimya," Prompto said. He ducked into the tent, tidying up by shoving stuff to the side and spreading Ignis' sleeping bag out in the center. "Come here and lie down. And stop scratching. I'll get you some water – fluids are good, right?"

"Maybe we should go." Ignis gestured loosely toward the road.

Prompto did not want to be driving if Ignis suddenly erupted in plant tentacles. At least as long as Ignis was in a haven, Prompto knew for sure that he wasn't daemonic.

"Let's just see what Dave says." Prompto grabbed a flask and filled it from their kettle. "Here, take this, drink a lot."

Ignis didn't make any jokes about watering plants, but Prompto knew him well enough to tell that he wanted to.

Once Ignis was settled down in the tent, Prompto wrote to Gladio, too, just to see if he'd ever heard of something like this. And then he figured he might as well ask Sania, too. Somebody had to know something. He hoped.

He was cleaning up while waiting for replies when he heard a low, pained groan from the tent. He crawled in and knelt up to hang his clip-on flashlight off the ring on the ceiling. In its stark light he could see Ignis sprawled on top of his sleeping bag, naked from the waist up, without shoes or socks, and with his trousers unzipped and hanging low on his hips. He looked like plague porn, Prompto decided. Very, very sexy, except for the unhealthy flush and the labored breathing. Oh, and the dark lines of roots spreading under his skin, and the green flush to yesterday's bruises where he'd stripped the bandage off.

Prompto's eyes were drawn belatedly to the gaping wide zip of Ignis' trousers, the clear outline of his cock pressed up against the material, the way Ignis' hands clenched and unclenched, as if he was fighting off the urge to dive back in and finish jerking himself off.

"So..." Prompto started. "This might be a status effect?"

"Perhaps," Ignis said, voice abraded from all the foliage. He rubbed one hand in a slow stroke down and up his leg, and his back arched just from that fruitless contact.

Prompto was suddenly, profoundly _irked_ with him, irritation slamming into him like an express train. "You won't let me do anything _else_ for you," he said, yanking his shirt over his head, tossing it behind him. "But this I can. So let me help you out until it wears off." He whipped his bootlaces loose and kicked his boots off.

"Are you stripping?" Ignis asked, with such perfect prim incredulity that Prompto wanted this to be real – to be his boyfriend and do a sexy striptease for him, to have the right to hold him and offer comfort, to make love to him without any weird magically-induced horniness.

"Yup," Prompto said, with cheerfulness so forced it came out nearly angry. He shoved his underwear and trousers down hard, and stepped out of them. "Your turn, Igster."

Ignis was staring at him wide-eyed, and so intently that Prompto knew instinctively that he was trying to see, to distinguish what in the shifting slurry of light and dark was pale freckled skin and yellow hair. Prompto wanted to give him that, but he couldn't, so he crouched down – mindful of the weight of his own hardening dick between his legs – and tugged Ignis' trousers off.

As soon as Ignis' cock sprang free, he covered it with a hand, probably trying to protect his modesty but then started rutting up against his palm like he couldn't help it.

"That's mine," Prompto reminded him. He crawled up Ignis' gorgeous long legs until he was straddling his thighs, and then reached down to intertwine his fingers with Ignis'. Ignis' hand was fever-hot but his cock was almost Infernian, flushed dark with heat and need. "You'll be okay – lie back and let me do the driving, okay?"

Ingis panted, open-mouthed and undone, but he managed to say, "Prompto", and then " _Prompto_ " again, like he was fighting against the spell for his sanity.

"Shut up." Prompto leaned forward and kissed Ignis' stomach, just to the side of his navel, where his skin was – so far – unblemished. Ignis shivered hard, and Prompto kept peppering him with kisses as he started jerking him off in earnest. He kept banging into his own dick and having to remind himself that this was for Ignis – practically medicinal, right? Helping a bro out.

He felt a light brush against his hair, Ignis getting his bearings, and then strong fingers slid through the strands and rubbed his scalp, sliding back to cup the base of his skull, and then forward to stroke the side of his head. He leaned into Ignis' palm and caught a pinch of his skin between his teeth, sucking for a moment, just long and hard enough to leave the dark smudge of a bruise blooming on his stomach. Ignis moaned, back arching, so Prompto did it again. This time Ignis' fingers on his dick clamped down, pumping brutally hard two – three – four times before coming with a cry as he thrashed in Prompto's arms.

After a moment of hard breathing, Ignis pushed Prompto off to the side and tugged him up, leaning in to kiss him, open-mouthed and desperate. Prompto had been about to congratulate himself for doing a good job of exorcising the sex spell, but apparently it wasn't entirely out of Ignis' system yet. He wasn't about to complain. Ignis was a fabulous kisser, better than Prompto had ever imagined, and it made his fingers and toes tingle, his hips rocking forward so he was rutting against Ignis' side.

Utterly filthy, and they were just getting started. Prompto lost count of how many rounds they went for before dropping into an exhausted sleep.

He woke half-sprawled on top of Ignis, or more technically half-glued to Ignis. He wasn't sure he'd ever been as gross, as sore, or as dizzied by happiness before in his life. He was warm all over, as if he'd ripened in the summer sun. His arm itched, and he scratched at it idly, wondering with syrupy slowness how they'd managed to get come there, on the inside of his elbow.

His skin was hot and sensitive, probably from him rubbing it in his sleep, and he held his arm up, twisting to see it in the light. In between his freckles, new dark dots were blooming, like a rash. He picked at the one that was itching, digging in with his fingernails and twisting until he'd dug it out.

Something small, round, speckled.

Like a seed.

He stared at it a moment, not liking it, but too drowsy to be able to remember why. Beside him, Ignis stirred, one hand questing out until he found Prompto's side, and stroked him lazily. "Are you well?"

Prompto flicked the seed away. "Oh, yeah." He wiped his bloody fingers on his thigh and then pressed his palm against Ignis' forehead. "You're still burning up."

Ignis shrugged, and pulled Prompto down to him again. He was hard and uninhibited about letting Prompto feel the impatient need in him. "Love you," he said, lips moving against Prompto's.

Prompto let himself be consumed by another kiss, ignoring the tickle in his throat. He was dizzy with the joy of being loved by the person he loved, and he told Ignis that, all his worries and misgivings melted away by the fruition of desire.


End file.
